Saturday, March 13, 2021
In re: Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, Appeal no. 2020-1012 (Federal Circuit, March 11, 2021) a three judge panel of Prost, Lurie and Reyna affirmed the ruling by the Board of Appeals that the claims of U. S. Serial No. 13/445,925 are patent ineligible, as directed to an abstract idea with no further inventive step. I tend to think of Judges Reyna and Prost as being in favor of a broad interpretation of the Mayo/Alice test and Judge Lourie as being less happy with the test but bound to apply it. However in American Axle, Lourie and Chen voted to rehear the appeal en banc while Judge Prost voted not to. Here, Judge Reyna wrote for the panel.